by David Carter

Greetings, sales charts fans! It’s time once again to look at DC’s sales figures.

(Warning: This month’s column contains a higher amount of ranting than usual…)

July was not a good month, sales-wise, for DC Entertainment. Compared to June, the average sales per title dropped by over 8K, and they sold 300K fewer total units in the NA direct market, despite offering nine more titles. Sales were down across the board, in many cases significantly, except for one title: Batgirl.

Why did things drop so significantly? Three main reasons:

New titles, whose sales last month were made returnable for their #1 issues, lost their returnability.

Returning titles, which last month had freely-returnable covers featuring the ever-popular Joker, this month featured Teen Titans Go!, which apparently was not viewed as desirable.

Secret Wars: Retailers apparently preferred to put their money into Marvel’s big event, now in full swing.

What evidence to we have of the above? Well the Secret Wars thing is pure conjecture, but the first two are born out by the aforementioned Batgirl. These past two months Batgirl has had neither variant covers nor been returnable, and it’s month-to-month sales dropped by a barely noticeable 0.2%

All of which points to actual readership being much more steady, and these drops, at least for the returning titles, having more to do with variant cover and order incentive shenanigans. Which for those of us who previously lived through the boom-and-bust speculator bubbles of previous decades recognize as signs of impending disaster.

And those drops this month are pretty bad. Most titles with freely-orderable variants saw drops of between 12 and 20%, while new titles in their second (non-returnable) issues saw drops between 30 and 50%.

But wait, things get worse!

As this column was nearing completion, word started hitting the various industry gossip sites that DC is changing their mind on this whole “Divergence”/”DC You” thing, and will instead be heading back in the direction of appealing to what they view as their ‘core’ or ‘traditional’ audience.

Which IMHO is really short-sighted.

The only way “Divergence” was going to work is in the long-term. DC seemed to be making a concerted effort to create comics that would appeal to an audience outside of the regular Wednesday comics crowd. So they shouldn’t be surprised when those comics don’t sell all that great in their traditional outlets. Can you really expect to know how these different approaches will do until you see how well the trade collections do (and in the long-term)?

It’s not as though a title like Doomed, which is pretty close to the sort of thing we would have seen in the New 52 days, is doing any better than most of the more outr new titles. So it’s not the approach that’s the problem, it’s the marketing.

As in there really wasn’t any. At least, none that I could see outside their usual preaching-to-the-regular-crowd approach.

DC launched 20+ titles last month. It was their largest single month of new titles since the New 52 launched in 2011, but the marketing support was just a fraction of that. Where was the marketing targeted at the readers that this new approach was meant to be aimed? Where were the Tumblr and Twitter ads? The social media campaigns? Did DC think that these readers were just going to magically show up in comic stores on Wednesdays and purchase comics they didn’t even know existed? DC seemed to be more concerned with dividing up their pages to sell ads for candy bars than they did in marketing their own big launch effort outside of their usual crowd.

(And yes, DC did all of those free eight page previews, but did anyone outside of the regular comics community even know that they existed?)

When the New 52 launched, people who were not regular comics buyers knew about it. Some of them even made the effort to go into comic stores and try them. Imagine what would have happened had their been a commensurate market push to the general public for this new launch of 20+ titles, and that those non-regular comics buying people this time found a grater variety of types of comics, increasing the chances that they’d find something that actually appealed to them.

And seriously, if DC cannot wait past just three or four months of Diamond orders on floppies before pulling the trigger on a new initiative, then they deserve whatever they end up getting.

But then what the hell do I know.

Warning: The commentary below may contain reasoned analysis, speculation (unfounded and otherwise), opinion, and/or snark. Those looking for a more straightforward analysis are directed to John Jackson Miller’s excellent Comichron analysis, posted earlier this month over at Comichron!

Please consider the fine print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

(Note that the percentage comparisons are now done with total orders including reorder activity, as opposed to initial orders as was the practice of this column under the previous administration.)

While one would likely expect for the Teen Titans Go! variant cover to not do as well as the Joker variant on a Batman comic, this drop-off seems awfully harsh. Still, it’s enough to return Batman to the top of DC’s sales for July.

Another harsh drop-off; and perhaps unfounded, as a second print of the previous issue charts with just under 6K copies, showing that there may be a greater demand for the “Darkseid War” story than some had originally anticipated.

You may be wondering (as I was) as to what the heck is going on here? Turns out that this comic was included in the Nerd Block subscription box for July, and Nerd Block must’ve gone through Diamond to get the comics for the box.

(It also allows us to make a guess as to how many Nerd Boxes were sent out in July: likely between 50K and 60K.)

Needless to say this is the top Vertigo comic for July.

The previous one-shot (Furiosa) sees just under 6K in orders chart for its second printing.

Which adds up to the Mad Max tie-ins being the most successful (non-Sandman) new comic for Vertigo in quite some time. Who had ‘Movie Tie-ins’ in the ‘How to Save Vertigo’ pool?

After last month’s multiple-variant-cover-fueled first issue, things come back down to normal for issue #2. 71K is certainly respectable, but it is a good 10K lower than the main Justice League. Historically it’s been difficult (though certainly not impossible) for DC to carry more than one Justice League title at a time, and right now they’re trying to carry four…

The debut issue of Cyborg is the top-selling $3 book from DC this month.

Though not the top-selling $3 book overall, as several Image books at that level outsell it. Marvel of course have very few $3 books left, and it doesn’t seem to be hurting their sales at all. I’ll be shocked if at this time next year DC has very many $3 comics left.

The first issue of IDW’s Star Trek/Green Lantern crossover sold about 70K (when returnability is factored in). Granted there were likely oodles of variants for that one, and it was a first issue with a curiosity factor. But when other companies are outselling DC’s take on its own character, that’s not a good sign.

I know that Gotham by Midnight got some love in last month’s comments, but as of yet that love hasn’t transferred over to sales to retailers. So if you want this (or any low-selling) book to continue, now is the time to start making a press for it.

DC’s last remaining title with issue numbers in the triple digits comes to an end. Sales for this showed up on the graphic novels chart, as it was listed as volume 22 of the collected editions even though it is all original material and the final issue of the series.

It was the top-selling graphic novel for July, but I expect that it was under-ordered as typical first month sales of Fables trades were in the 6-7K range, and when you add those to the sales for the floppies there won’t be enough to go around for both the single-issue readers and the trade readers.

Were Prez an Image title… well, it’d likely be selling at the same level. But it would probably be getting buzz as something fresh and relevant, and stand the chance of possibly seeing growing sales. But as a DC title at this level it will get written off as a dog. Which is a shame as it deserves buzz.

Continues to drop at a steady but ultimately not sustainable level. It’s not being solicited as a limited series, but I won’t be surprised if it comes to an end after issue #12 (unless the digital sales are better than usual).

Four Vertigo series and Scooby-Doo fail to make the Top 300 this month. This may be the final issues of Coffin Hill and Effigy: An issue #21 of CH was solicited but appears to have been cancelled, and no issues of Effigy have been solicited past #7. FBP is scheduled to end with issue #24.

—

Average Periodical Sales (not counting reprints, reorders shipping after the initial month of release, and magazines)

The numbers above are estimates for comic-book sales in the North American direct market, as calculated by ICv2.com according to the chart and index information provided by Diamond Comic Distributors.

ICv2.com’s estimates are somewhat lower than the actual numbers, but they are consistent from month to month, so the trends they show are fairly accurate. Since it’s a “month-to-month” column, the comments, unless otherwise noted, are on the most recent month.

Bear in mind that the figures measure sales of physical comics to retailers, not customers. Also, these numbers do not include sales to bookstores, newsstands, other mass-market retail chains or the United Kingdom. Re-orders are included, so long as they either reached stores in a book’s initial calendar month of release or were strong enough to make the chart again in a subsequent month. Keep in mind that sales for some titles may include incentives to acquire variants and not every unit sold is necessarily even intended to be sold to a customer.

If additional copies of an issue did appear on the chart after a book’s initial calendar month of release, you can see the total number of copies sold in brackets behind those issues (e.g. “[36,599]”). Should more than one issue have shipped in a month which is relevant for one of the long-term comparisons, the average between them will be used.

Titles which are returnable have their numbers artificially adjusted down by Diamond. To make up for that this column increases the reported numbers for those titles by 10%. Which is likely also wrong, but it’s a different and likely less wrong kind of wrong, and experience has shown that this leads to sales figures which are more consistent.

Titles released under the All-Ages line and magazines, such as Mad, mostly sell through channels other than the direct market, so direct-market sales don’t tell us much about their performance. For most Vertigo titles, collection sales tend to be a significant factor, so the numbers for those books should be taken with a grain of salt as well. To learn (a little) more about Vertigo’s collection sales, go right here.

Please keep in mind that raw sales numbers do not tell us about how profitable a book is for a publisher or for the creators.

Above all, do not allow sales numbers to dictate your purchasing and enjoyment of a particular comic. If you enjoy reading a comic series then go right on buying and reading that comic, no matter what the sales figures say.

** Two asterisks after a given month in the average charts mean that one or more periodical release did not make the Top 300/400 chart in that month. In those cases, it’s assumed that said releases sold as many units as the No. 300/400 comic on the chart for that month for the purposes of the chart, although its actual sales are likely to be less than that.

Opinions expressed in this column are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Heidi MacDonald or anyone at The Comics Beat, the American Frozen Food Institute, or my former neighbor’s dog Miles.

The author of this column does weekly snapshots of Amazon comic sales charts at http://yetanothercomicsblog.blogspot.com/ and tweets about comics and related subjects on Twitter at @davereadscomics (PM me there is you need to contact me).

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Comments

I’m not sure that a much better orchestrated marketing campaign would have significantly helped DC You title sales. At least not in the short-term.

The problem is that DC is trying to appeal to “non-traditional” markets with just more of the same traditional product (i.e., superheroes). Yes, the characters are more diverse, but when you get right down to it, DC You is still about super-powered people in costumes, responding to violent crises with the threat of even more violence. People who aren’t interested in that sort of thing aren’t going to start reading superhero comics all of a sudden just because Starfire is now wearing a more sensible costume or because an African-American superhero in Cyborg now headlines a new solo title.

While I applaud DC’s efforts to create comics that are more inclusive, not every reader finds the superhero metaphor particularly relevant to their interests, and no amount of marketing or retooling will do much to change that, I’m afraid.

Dave, loved your outburst on variant covers and impeding doom. I’m glad I’m not the only one concerned.
This whole 20+ new title event also probably suffered from DC’s poor management of the whole New 52 thing. They had the perfect opportunity to restart from scratch, to propose new things and what did we have: titles changing writers, artists and direction every two months, continuity problems after 6 months… A lot of people came back then to try the new DC, some stayed, reading Batman and Harley Quinn but the rest, the extra readers the whole New52 thing attracted, where are they now?
And why would they believe DC would make it right now if, when it was easier to do so 4 years ago, they failed?
And yeah, I agree with you: its not by releasing 10 unusual titles at the same time that you’re gonna educate your readers into reading something different.

I think the main problem is simply the saturation of the market Marvel has done with Star Wars and Secret Wars. They’ve SOAKED the market with those books, which are also priced pretty high. Fans simply can’t afford to buy everything at $4, $5, and $6 a pop — and something has to give. Unfortunately for DC, it’s their books — because no one wants to miss out on the “event that changes everything” for Marvel or their new “canonical” Star Wars series. A bit of a shame, since DC has put out some good books with their DCYou initiative — but no real surprise.

“(And yes, DC did all of those free eight page previews, but did anyone outside of the regular comics community even know that they existed?)”
Probably not. I’m on the margins of the regular comics community, and I only knew about the previews from reading their reviews on The Beat. So, I went to the site, and looked each and every one of them myself. And then I bought none of those comics. I’m not sure what kind of crap shoot strategy is going on at DC these days, but none of the newest stuff makes me want to buy.

Agreed on all points about the failures of marketing and outreach, and DC’s burning readers and retailers alike repeatedly, not only with their waning annual non-events and seemingly neverending trudge of increasingly homogenized weeklies that don’t even tell bloody stories when they’re through, but with the utter disaster that was Convergence, effectively stopping stopping their line, among it several promising nascent titles, in its tracks for a full two months when the tepid Futures End month wasn’t even far back enough to be a distant memory. And I echo that it’s a shame, because there are legitimately good, interesting, and *fun* books on the stands. Check out Doctor Fate — Levitz is back in form, and Sonny Liew’s art is just to die for; there’s energy, a sense of danger, and an endearing uncertainty from the youthful lead, who I can’t wait to grow with from issue to issue! Fletcher and Wu’s Black Canary is just a crackling rock opera! And Prez is a roaring satire, blazing with invention and imagination! I honestly wish I had the cash to invest in some of these books from a creative standpoint myself, but I don’t. I’m just a reader, there’s a lot I want to read, and if DC decide that my money, attention, and good word of mouth that I’m trying to spread, not just to comics readers, but to people who might not be walking into a shop otherwise, aren’t worth my time, then that’s on them. I was excited, now as rumors fly about meat and potatoes, I’m wary; if they aren’t willing to see how this plays out in trade sales, I’ll happily leave too, because I’m obviously not the kind of reader they’d want.

The most unfortunate thing, for me, is that DC continues to have no idea what to do with Superman. Why are Superman books selling in such lower numbers than they did a decade ago? Is he too old-hat? The elementary school kids I teach know who he is as well as they know Batman, Hulk, the Minions, the Ninja Turtles, Spongebob, etc… so he’s popular with kids. Of course, maybe two out of the thousand kids in my classes read comics. But the adult comic readers just aren’t into Superman comics, I guess?

@Aaron: Ten years ago the Superman titles were crossing over in the “Sacrifice” storyline (Max Lord mind controls Superman, is killed by Wonder Woman) as part of the lead-up to Infinite Crisis. It was a surprise hit, with 2nd printings selling an additional 13K each for both Superman & Action (and a whopping additional 39K for Wonder Woman.)

Quick note to AwesomeDude : good analogy!
And I know it’s beyond the scope of this analysis- but I’d love to know (1) what other comics lapsed-DC fans are spending their money on and (2) does the $3.99 price point deter sales? Seems crazy to me that Image can offer so many cheaper books. And does that price threshold work differently for Marvel than it does for DC? I wonder if part of what we’re seeing is the emergence of Marvel & Image as the new big two…?
I’d also agree with your initial idea that new marketing was/is needed to attract new readers, Dave.

These steep drops even for something as guaranteed as Johns’ Justice League/Snyder’s Batman highly suggests to me that there is something fishy going on at the retailer level. I know DC has made some questionable moves in terms of returnability for DC books and it really sounds like retailers are ordering light on DC books in retaliation.

@Ed Catto “Seems crazy to me that Image can offer so many cheaper books.”

Well, when you don’t pay your creative team, *and* you take a couple grand off the top of the sales for your fee, the normal rules of business that all other publishers are beholden to don’t apply to you.

A lot of these numbers depress me (only 16K for “Section 8”?, though I guess it’s in the top 150…) Though I think it made a lot of sense to market a lot of these new books as six-issue mini-series. I still think we won’t see Prez volume 2, though — and that’s a shame as that’s a pretty good book. As is Black Canary and Bizarro.

The worst part about this is that I’m finding almost all the Secret Wars mini-series to be massively underwhelming “What-If” stories (the main mini is good, though) and the flooding of the market by Marvel is certainly doing DC no favors here.

But, yeah, some of DC’s decisions baffle me. I mean who is actually asking for a *Telos* book? Seriously? I predict worse numbers than Klarion for that one. Get the popcorn.

Marvel is not flooding any market, the SW tie–ins simply replace the in universe series that have stopped during the event. They are publishing, and were publishing before SW, an average of 70 books for months. The fact that SW and the first issues of the SW tie-ins are outsolding Convergence and DC You, I honestly don’t think it can be ascribed to sheepish readers that can’t miss the “event that ends everything”, clearly readers find Marvel’s offer more desirable (or Marvel’s marketing works better, I am not defending Marvel per se or saying their books are higher quality than the competition). The $3.99 price point…if readers prefers to spend 25% more to get a Marvel book than an equivalent DC book, I wouldn’t say the their higher price point subtract readers to DC, it still seems a casa where readers consider Marvel’s offer better despite the competitive price of DC offer. I guess the honest thing to say it’s that Dan De Dio and Jim Lee are really not fit to head a comic company in 2015 :)

Yes, my position is that the Big Two pump out a ton of disposable product, filling store shelves, and thusly cause smaller publishers an inability to make a dent at the retailer level. That’s been the strategy for decades. A good book to check out is Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe, which digs a little bit into this phenomenon and when it began.

Kyle: this is HARDLY limited to Marvel and DC — there is essentially NO publisher of any significance that isn’t producing twice as many comics as the market really wants — even “alternative” press publishers like Fantagraphics.

And the reason for THIS is because the distributors (heh, I mean Diamond) completely lost control of the relationship post-Heroes World. DC (in particular) can contractually do almost any damn thing that they like, and Diamond can’t do a thing about almost any of it.

Also, if Marvel and DC cut their lines in half tomorrow, the next 20 largest publishers would NOT suddenly sell many more copies of their production — the market WANTS to sell as many comics as it can; low-selling books are a result of the editorial content OF those books, not DC & Marvel “flooding” the market.

Thanks Brian, I appreciate the perspective. But is your stance that if retailers today weren’t stocking their shelves with a full line-up of whatever the Big Two push, we wouldn’t in turn see orders of greater volume of Dark Horse, IDW, etc comics? If the customer base had more flexible income that wasn’t expended upon buying 50 DC or Marvel comics in a month, what are the odds they would in turn take a risk on Transformers vs GI Joe or Mind MGMT? Is that not likely?

I’m genuinely curious if you think buying habits are predicated on what’s more available. Awareness seems to be key in my experience, but I’m not the one running a shop.

“If the customer base had more flexible income that wasn’t expended upon buying 50 DC or Marvel comics in a month, what are the odds they would in turn take a risk on Transformers vs GI Joe or Mind MGMT? Is that not likely?”

So, the Main Showcase store that is “Indy Friendly” (best selling periodical in 2014: Sandman, best seller #2: Saga; books are 60% of sales)…. we sell +2 rack copies of TRANSFORMERS and 0 copies of GI JOE and +2 from subs on MIND MGMT.

(which literally translates as 2, 0, 16 copies sold)

(Where SANDMAN sold +100 subs, and SAGA +60 or so, on BIG subs)

The smaller satellite store is like +0, and +0 and +0 on those three titles (or, like 2, 1, 1 in absolute terms) (and is like +30 or so each of both S-titled books)

So…. no, not likely?

The market doesn’t sell comics for any other reason than “that’s what people want”, and the relative achievements of a “creator owned” focused store like myself aside…. it takes actual active work and passion over and over again pushing of “non-traditional” to even sell a FEW copies of such material. We’re successful with the S’s because we’ve spent TWENTY-SIX YEARS trying to work on that audience, despite that really not working for maybe half of that time.

The fundamental reason that comics don’t sell is not “someone else fucking with the market” — it is “that’s not objectively a good comic”, IMHO

But it isn’t “Marvel and DC are crowding out the good comics”, because that’s assuming, Kyle, that the readership are mouth-breathing IDIOTS who can’t appreciate quality, and you don’t believe that, do you? I know I don’t… and ALL I do is sell comics to people, Kyle.

Kyle, I think the “if you put yogurt by the salami, people who want to buy salami will buy yogurt” theory has pretty much been disproven in comics, as Brian suggests. It is OK to have different kinds of comics fans…some read Green Lantern, some read Green Llama, some read KC Green. The NEw 52 definitely markete to outside the usual suspects though, and a lot of new readers came in. Even if they didn’t like the NEw 52 specifically there were so many other great comics that sales rose across the board.

“The fundamental reason that comics don’t sell is not “someone else fucking with the market” — it is “that’s not objectively a good comic”,”
I disagree so much with this statement. We all know tons of indredibly good comics that failed miserably with their sales and , on the other side, crap which sold by truckloads. There is no law but saying that something that will not sell is because it’s badly executed is certainly not a right statement in comics, where a lot of people buy by habit and will not go out of their confort zone to search for something different.

I think the key word is “objectively” – there’s no guarantee that books from other publishers are going to sell better than DC or Marvel’s, so swapping DC/Marvel for indy isn’t necessarily a recipe for success.

Brian Hibbs has forgotten more about the comics business than I’ll ever know, but…

1. Marvel has absolutely been guilty of flooding the market with product in the past. I’m not sure if they’re doing it today.

2. History has shown us that 90% of the time, the exact same comic will sell more if published by Marvel than if published by DC and more if published by Marvel/DC than by some indie company.

3. I don’t think there’s much evidence that people buying Marvel or DC would buy more indie’s if there were fewer Marvel or DC books on the shelves. I do think an industry that attracted and lived off more of a casual audience would sell more indie books, but I haven’t the faintest idea how to create/recreate that business model.

I have to agree with Xavier here, Brian. I mean, look at the sales above for something like Prez. In 3 issues, it’s probably been one of the strongest Big Two comics I’ve read since the early issues of Dial H and/or Hawkeye, but the sales don’t reflect that. Yet, based on critical acclaim, it’s hard to argue that it’s not objectively a good comic, as you say. So where’s the disconnect?

And no, of course I don’t think readers are “mouth-breathing idiots”, but I do get discouraged when IP is valued over creator innovation. But then again, we’re talking about an industry where people are more concerned with what Superman is wearing instead of the actual stories that are being told with him (which again, are really good right now between Pak and Yang, but sales aren’t great).

By the way, I was talking specifically about Tom Scioli and John Barber’s Transformers vs GI Joe, but I’m sure that doesn’t really sell any better unfortunately.

Also, point well taken, Heidi! And thanks again for the insight Brian!

The bread and butter for Marvel and for DC are super-heroes in a much larger shared universe setting that (sometimes more, sometimes less) has a continuity and history. Yes, they publish other things to varying degrees, but that’s their bread and butter. (Or, if you prefer, meat and potatoes.)

To the extent that Marvel floods the market, it is attempting to tie up the cash of its primary customer base but I think that will most likely affect those customers’ likelihood of purchasing DC publications. And vice versa for DC when they flood the market. The best analogy I can think of is McDonald’s and Burger King primarily fight for customers who are looking for burgers and fries (meat and potatoes!), but that fight won’t have that much of an impact on customers who are more interested in things like Subway or Saladworks.

What this means is that if you are really fundamentally more of a *comic book customer* rather than a Marvel/DC customer, then having Marvel or DC pumping out more product won’t prevent you from buying publications from other companies. Because, well, you might be the sort of person who likes a burger once in a while, but you really like subs and salads too, and increasing the number of McD or BK restaurants will not influence you to buy more McWhoppers.

@Mbunge: “History has shown us that 90% of the time, the exact same comic will sell more if published by Marvel than if published by DC and more if published by Marvel/DC than by some indie company.”

I think that’s a misread of history because what it really is (AT BEST) is that “more retailers are willing to stock a book if published by….” But once a book sells what it does, the trade dress on the outside of that comic has virtually no impact on sales, just as no one thinks about buying “A Random House novel” versus “A Macmillan novel”. The audience doesn’t give a shit.

The place where the audience cares is in @comicsatemybrain’s statement — customers are clearly attached to the fictional *universes* of Marvel and DC comics, but if, dunno, SEX CRIMINALS suddenly sprouted a Marvel logo, it wouldn’t sell any better or worse *to consumers*. MORE STORES might decide to carry it, so more consumers might have the CHANCE to buy it, but on a “blind taste test” kind of setup, I am positive the audience itself would not change one gram either direction.

“I do think an industry that attracted and lived off more of a casual audience would sell more indie books, but I haven’t the faintest idea how to create/recreate that business model.”

@Kyle: “I mean, look at the sales above for something like Prez. In 3 issues, it’s probably been one of the strongest Big Two comics I’ve read since the early issues of Dial H and/or Hawkeye, but the sales don’t reflect that.”

I find it pretty weird you’re using a DC comic to try to make a point about indy sales, BUT…. PREZ #1 featured 20 pages of story where the LEAD CHARACTER DID NOT MEET THE STATED PREMISE OF THE COMIC — she, in fact, doesn’t even come CLOSE to becoming President until issue #2. That, right there, is the sign of a writer (and much much more… an EDITOR!) who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and that’s why in my Indy-friendly store where we stumped hard for the book sales between issue #1 and #2 dropped by 60% or so. That’s like if BATMAN #1 ended with Bruce and his parents looking at the paper and talking about maybe seeing a movie over the weekend!

People buy the comics that they want (if/when they are presented to them) — when comics don’t sell, it is really and truly because people don’t want them (or because they weren’t informed of them, to a lesser extent), but not because Marvel is producing too many flavors of the Squishee. All producing too many flavors of Squishee does is drive down/fragment SQUISHEE sales — it doesn’t sell a single less bottle of, say, bourbon.

And to really drive this back to DC and the DCYou initiative, while there are people who did like and appreciate BATGIRL, you simply can’t have a “Batgirling” of the whole line and expect they’ll all take, inherently. The audience who is reading and liking BATGIRL and MS MARVEL is, in many cases, not even slightly looking for more very-close-in-tone titles of the same genre.

I only bring up Prez because I was focusing on your statement about quality influencing sales. Feel free to replace Prez with 8House or We Can Never Go Home to return to that “Indie” vs. Big Two discussion.

“That, right there, is the sign of a writer (and much much more… an EDITOR!) who doesn’t know what he’s doing”

Yeah, I’ll be honest and say I fully disagree with you here and leave it at that.

“You simply can’t have a “Batgirling” of the whole line and expect they’ll all take, inherently.”

This I do agree with, like I said in another thread, there’s a reason Marvel’s post-Secret Wars line-up looks fairly house-style.

As we’re maybe uncovering here, perhaps the audience for “more idiosyncratic” superhero books just isn’t there to support an entire line. It’s again, a shame, as books like Grayson, Omega Men, Midnighter and Gotham Academy, which have very organic and novel approaches, are terrific reads and real highlights of the mainstream set I think.

1) the preview to Prez in whatever Convergence book that was, – was very strong. The character was President, it had action, and she had agency. She was making decisions and being awesome.

2) IN the first issue of Prez (which I bought) – she had no agency. Not only was she not President, but she wasn’t taking steps to become president. Her Presidency isn’t a result of actions on her part, but of an accident with a fryer, and things being done TO her (dude uploads to youtube against her wishes, a different dude supports her for no reason) – She was NOT A PROTAGONIST.

I’ll join the chorus here re: PREZ. The titular character did lack agency–and panel-time even, the issue had the epitome of false jeopardy with its cliffhanger (Will Prez become Prez?) and it seemed to have an air that everyone involved was expecting the reader to give it more than a single issue.

All comic publishers take advantages from putting out a huge ammount of titles every month: Disccount at the printer, disccount at the distributor (depending on how many of those titles are sold) – all benefits of a higher share of the market.

DC as a Publisher needs to be profitable. On the other hand it probably generates less revenue for the company than licenced products bases on its characters / IP. It’s mainly a breeding farm, so to speak. It’s no accident that it’s President has landed a promotion related to Consumer Products and licencing.

The problem here, regarding DC’s sales, has been Warner Bros itself. Having been reminded it owns a comic Publisher after Disney bought Marvel, its heavy corporated hand has failed in some key fronts:

– Marketing to new audiences (why aren’t BATGIRL trades outselling, say, SMILE, in the book market?);

– Pandering to the ageing tradicional audience (well, thet try to te those back sometimes, an arm chopped off here and there);

– Capitalizing on other media (why are Flash and Green Arrow not selling Walking Dead Numbers?);

– Building a strong brand (new nerds love “Marvel” like it’s the new Pixar, yet they don’t understand why DC can’t make movies like the former – since DC does movies too, right?);

– Convincing J.K. Rowling to licence Harry Potter to Comics (the only way to try and reach Star Wars numbers);

– Better market the comic line in general, specially outside of the niche (not easy, and they have done the occasional TV ad – but it’s not like they have no access to the proper channels);

@Zach: SOME printers price based on overall monthly volume of printing, rather than on individual books, but I think you need to be doing (say) 250k or that kind of range to earn that kind of volume pricing.

I remember taking a tour of Quebecor many years ago where DC reps mentioned they had great pricing because Time/Warner also printed, well, TIME and mags like that, and DC got in on that pricing. Totally different paradigm for Warner Bros today, though!

DC’s fate was sealed the day they decided they didn’t need (or want) the old fans back after the new 52 Reboot. Dan got a few of us back with Convergence. But, as usual, followed that up with Batmite and Doomed (so aptly named!). So, we all left again, and the few new readers left are not interested either. So many 30+ year fans gone for good. Dan is like one of the inexperienced airplane pilots, when things go to hell and the autopilot shuts off, he will pull up on the stick. The crash will be most impressive. DC is truly the walking dead, infected and not even knowing it. DC deserves it, they opted for Didiot and Lee.

“DC’s fate was sealed the day they decided they didn’t need (or want) the old fans back after the new 52 Reboot.”

DC has been playing second fiddle for Marvel, at times distantly so, since the early 70s. The only time since then that DC has been or par or leading Marvel in sales, as far as I know, for a sustained period was the post 90s implosion.

Why it’s been that way is a pretty complicated story, involving both internal comic industry realities and broader cultural trends/changes, but it’s not like Didio is the captain of the Titanic.

The problem the DC You initiative is the that it more or less was the exact opposite editorial direction DC comics need to go the perennial problem with the New 52 line is that DC failed to take the time and effort to re-establish their characters and their place in the DCU and the DCU itself. Consequently key aspects of their characters were in a state of flux and instead of taking the time to clear thing up DC kept on piling on more and character changes in faster and faster succession. The editorial policy seemed wholly directionless let the writers do what they want with these characters until sale drop off then change out writers and tone of the book the DCU has become unmoored and The editorial attitude of Screw continuity altogether in favor of “story” which was the philosophy DC You made that problem all the worse. The line is now more impenetrable than ever before to both new and longtime readers Their 3 biggest icons are now unrecognizable. The DC editors do not seem to understand that is they do not take the time to invest in their characters and flesh them out readers won’t invest in them either so changing their status quos appeals to few people because New readers won’t really care about such changes and established readers will just quit reading. MY advise to Dc stop being lazy about continuity its kind of an essential thing in continuous story telling no time displaced JLA books. And when you do want to make changes and introduce new characters do it gradually not all at once so that said changes and characters are actual story payoffs not gimmicks.

With all due respect (and I have a fair amount), the switch of Jeff Lemiere and Andrea Sorrento from Green Arrow to Hawkeye seems to be about as clear a test case on the effect of DC trade dress against Marvel trade dress as one could imagine. It is the exact same creative team moving between two titles with very similar premises and attention in the broader world. The sales difference was that the Marvel title nearly tripled the sales of the DC one.

The natural response is that Lemiere and Sorrento had a better “lead-in” at Marvel. The Fraction-Aja Hawkeye was far, far better run to follow than whatever DC has been doing with Green Arrow, since …

That roughly is the issue. DC can and does produce some amazing stuff. They just have trouble sustaining it from run-to-run. Titles get a great creative team, build some momentum and then plunge into the abyss for years. Marvel keeps some minimum level of quality with most of the mid-tier, or better, books that they publish. That gives readers faith in the brand that DC does not engender.

“And seriously, if DC cannot wait past just three or four months of Diamond orders on floppies before pulling the trigger on a new initiative, then they deserve whatever they end up getting.”

David, I think you need to NOT take the rumours of DC turning their back on DC You as true. After all, they were *rumours* conjured by gossip sites like Bleeding Cool. A rumour is not fact.

DC have already flat out denied they’re turning their back on DC You, if you’ve read or watched their official press straight from the co-publishers. They understand DC You IS the long term and is breaking new ground for them. They didn’t just start this initiative with no thought to it. They understand the risk.

So maybe you should actually get *your facts right* (and straight from DC) BEFORE posting a line like “then they deserve whatever they end up getting.” Maybe you should fact check it before running with your petty assumptions and coming across as uninformed.

Or maybe you posted that what you did, to stir up the comics reading crowd, have them hate DC even more and who want DC to fail. Seeing as Comicsbeat is associated with those rumour sites sometimes, I wouldn’t be surprised.